Most jobs involving digital information are computer-centric. My job (IT) and that of millions out there predominantly involve exchange and manipulation of digital information and this ties us to our laptops/PCs/Macs, etc. and I/O interfaces like keyboards, mice, touch screens, etc. How about doing the same stuff by working with digital information spatially? To do this, we would require a new type of I/O interface and what could be simpler and more intuitive to use than hand gestures! – so, we have it – gestural i/o. The SixthSense uses gestural I/O. A lot of research in the field of gestural I/O and Human-Computer Interaction has been performed by Oblong Industries together with MIT’s Tangible Media Lab. Oblong Industries is the developer of the g-speak spatial operating environment. View the video below for an overview of g-speak:

By the way, gestural I/O was not inspired byMinority Report, but rather the work done by Oblong industries/MIT inspired Minority Report. The movie’s Production Designer visited MIT Labs to determine how to depict a plausible future in the movie as required by Steven Spielberg. So, Spielberg wanted to depict 2054 AD as something which could be made real one day and I guess he was rather pessimistic when choosing the year 2054 as it seems we’re only a few years or a decade away from doing that stuff depicted in Minority Report.

Read this interesting account on the development of gestural I/O and spatial operating environments at Oblong and MIT.